


After the Same Rainbow’s End

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Dancing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(”My huckleberry friend, Moon River, and me.”) </p><p>The first time he sees her dance, they’re at a Twi’lek folk festival. The music is foreign to him, some kind of a stringed thing turned electric, probably modernized. On the back edge of the crowd, under the shaded portico, stand the Twi’lek drummers. Although “stand” isn’t really the word for it–sometimes they bend, hammering out at double pace, sometimes lean back to throw a stick into the air and catch it. The beat of the drums has followed them through the market stalls all morning. It looks exhausting, but the drummers don’t look exhausted. </p><p>Hera lights up. She tosses the market bag at him without a word of explanation. A moment later he’s holding her shoes, too. Then she abandons him gleefully and joins the circle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Same Rainbow’s End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShannonPhillips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/gifts).



1)      The first time he sees her dance, they’re at a Twi’lek folk festival. The music is foreign to him, some kind of a stringed thing turned electric, probably modernized. On the back edge of the crowd, under the shaded portico, stand the Twi’lek drummers. Although “stand” isn’t really the word for it–sometimes they bend, hammering out at double pace, sometimes lean back to throw a stick into the air and catch it. The beat of the drums has followed them through the market stalls all morning. It looks exhausting, but the drummers don’t look exhausted. 

Hera lights up. She tosses the market bag at him without a word of explanation. A moment later he’s holding her shoes, too. Then she abandons him gleefully and joins the circle.  

He’s never seen her lekku fly out like that. The leaps he  _has_  seen, but not in a group, not precisely timed, part of a dance rather than a fight. They don’t even stop to space themselves out beforehand, and it’s perfect. Most of the galaxy thinks it knows what “Twi’lek dancing” looks like. This is completely different, nothing sexual or undulating in it, just hands and feet and lekku flung out in graceful straight lines, energy directed outwards. And the occasional backwards arch, to be fair. He could stand to see more of that.  

The first time he encountered Hera, she’d leapt into the air like that, catching the second-story scaffolding. His mind had been blown. Watching her dance, that move makes a lot more sense. 

She’s happy. Free. No,  _care_ free. He’s never seen that before.  

And she looks good, whirling like a child’s top, whipping her head around in advance to keep from getting dizzy, her eyes finding that spot on the outside of the circle to keep focus. 

She’s focusing on him.  

 

2)      The first time they dance together, she laughs at him. 

It’s not an auspicious beginning. Formal dancing, it turns out, isn’t much like fighting. You want to miss the other person, for one thing, rather than hit them. He moves left while she moves left and their knees bump. He lets out the frustration with a sound low in his throat. 

“Kanan, I know you can do this. This is movement, you love stuff like this.” 

“You have to show me the steps first, Hera. I can’t just intuit them.” 

An apologetic shrug. “That’s fair. …Are you sure we can’t do this in the common area? There’s a lot more room.” 

He glances around the cramped bunk, two steps across. She’s got a point. But no. His face is burning. “Chopper will laugh at me.” 

She considers. “Probably. Bunk it is.” He’s rarely seen the inside of her bunk. Once to bring her soup when she was sick, a handful of other times to bring fresh laundry that’s gotten mixed up with his. He had hoped to feel a little more confident the first time he swept her into his arms in here. 

“Okay, look.” She stands next to him. “You make a Leth-shape with your foot. One-two-three, one-two-three.” 

“Are you sure we’re going to have to dance to infiltrate this fancy party?” 

“No, but it doesn’t hurt to learn. Feet, Kanan.” 

He sighs and imitates. “Wait a minute—where did  _you_  learn to do this?” 

She’s watching his feet intently. Her voice is professionally nonchalant, but the faint blush gives her away. “It’s kind of a long story.” 

He grins. That’s better. He’s going to learn to dance and then twirl Hera around the floor in fancy clothes two days from now. And he’s going to get that long story out of her and tease her forever.  

 

3)      The next time they dance together is horrible.

She lets him stay with the ship because it’s easier for her to pose as a member of a mostly-non-human shantytown colony. There’s talk of rebellion. She goes to see if it’s more than talk.  

He keeps his ears open for news relating to the colony, even on the private channels that Chopper theoretically shouldn’t be able to hack. Still, they don’t get much warning. He lets her know that the Imperials are coming to test the new weapon a bare forty-five minutes before it happens.  “Get to the foothills. The rocky ground will protect you. I’ll get there as soon as I can.” 

The Ghost is almost two days away, and she doesn’t have enough warning. He keeps the same private channel open to hear about the fallout. Beyond the point of impact explosion, they mention massive earthquakes and mudslides—an unmitigated success. So when the comm buzzes and he hears her voice—“Specter 1, come in”—he’s so wild with relief that he doesn’t catch the timbre.

She’s managed to get a dozen of the colonists to safety. Most of the rest are dead. Not all of them, though, not yet. When he arrives, she and the colonists have worked at desperate rescue efforts for thirty hours straight. She doesn’t answer her comm because she’s up to her shoulders in the mud, her back half safely stretched out atop it. And when he tries to pull her out, she gets hysterical. “Don’t! Help me! HELP me!”  

Oh, Force. She’s holding onto something. 

Kanan uses the Force grip so gently to pull them out of the mud, but the child stopped breathing some time ago, from the looks of it.  

Later, he makes her shower. She’s a mess. He’s never seen her break down like this before. He’s never seen her break down at all before. So he heats her some soup and puts a blanket around her shoulders to make up for the two days of chill he wasn’t there to stave off. And her eyes don’t focus on him as she says, “I should have found a branch to put under his arms. I looked. I couldn’t find a branch anywhere. They’d all been pulverized.”  

“Hera, you used your  _body_.”  

“I should have found a way to pull him out. I should have gone in deeper.”

“Stop, Hera. Just stop.” He knows what she’s feeling, but he doesn’t know what to do. So he does something stupid, instead. He hauls her up bodily, places her arms around his neck (Her eyes say “What are you doing?”) and waltzes her around the common room.

She leans her forehead against his chest and holds on. The insteps of their feet bump. After a moment, she lets out a ragged sigh and moves her feet on her own, still not looking up. One-two-three, one-two-three. Tiny steps. Knees and feet touching. Kanan supporting most of her weight. She’s only a friend, not even a lover, but he hasn’t grieved for someone else’s pain like this in years.  

He sings the words, rough and off-key, into the top of her head. She’s too old and too strong to need a lullaby, but somebody has to do something and he’s the only one here. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if this is doing any good. 

But it is.  

 

4)      The biggest dance party they ever attend happens the night after the Battle of Endor. Some thrown-together event on an open air pavilion, all instruments welcome. Holostation rock, traditional ballads from across the galaxy, Mandalorian tango…the bands play everything, including some music neither of them can imagine how to dance to. And they just dance. All night.

Kanan lets himself feel some relief through the trepidation, even though Endor was just a matter of luck. Coruscant’s going to be much, much harder. There’s no way they’re re-taking the Core without some painful losses. 

Still. The Emperor is dead. Darth Vader is dead. Hera is alive. Ezra is alive. Nobody is coming after him. And with so many ecstatic people in one place, the Force goes nuts. He can’t help the dopey grin. He’s free.  

Hera dances like she’s possessed, even daring, in the small and dark hours of the morning, to steal some very undulating kisses while they move. Kanan takes deep breaths and wonders if she would agree to making their way back to the Ghost, or even some secluded corner somewhere… They wouldn’t be the only ones.  

They stay and dance, though, because this is her celebration. This is her first true passion, this cause, and tonight that love has finally been requited. There’s a look in her eyes, a hectic joy or a happy exhaustion… something worth missing sleep for. 

When the sun starts to come up over the pavilion, she pulls him from the tables and back to his feet. Arms around necks, arms around sides. They’re all tired. The dance is slow. He kisses her temple. “You did it,” he murmurs in her ear.

She laughs. “Somebody did.” More serious, “Thank you for staying.” Even now, this isn’t what he would be doing on his own. 

“Anything.” 

She echoes, “Anything.” 

A moment of silent swaying. “Hera?”

“Hmm?”  Both are raw with a night of too much feeling. He should probably save this for later. “I was thinking…” 

She gives him the space to think it out.

“We’ve won. We’re not…done… I get that. But we’ve actually won, and we’re not dead. Who would have believed that?”  

“Kanan, love…”  _What can I do for you? What are you thinking?_  That gives him courage.  

“All I mean is…” How to phrase this? “We’re not being hunted anymore… I know things won’t be a walk in the park, but…” 

“Love.” Just say it. 

“Things are a little safer, now. Maybe we could reconsider that thing about a baby?” 

A skeptical eyebrow. 

“Never mind.” 

But she’s grinning at him. “Take Coruscant for me, and we’ll talk.” 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want a soundtrack, #1 is “Bare Feast” by Ratatat (omit the last line, which always feels out of place to me), #2 is the generic waltz of your choice, #3 is “Moon River” by the Henry Mancini Orchestra, and #4 is a grouping of songs too vast to be named (for some reason, I have “Anna Sun” by Walk the Moon in my head, and that’s only partially appropriate).


End file.
